House Agriculture Committee Passes CFTC Reauthorization

“The bill … helps strengthen our financial market infrastructure and makes it more resilient. It also combats fraud and promotes cooperation among regulators,” said Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson of Minnesota. “But it’s even more important to me that we’ve done it in a bipartisan way that sends a strong message to the Senate. The people that look to our markets for integrity don’t care about political wins and losses. They expect us to conduct the business of this Committee.”

The bipartisan legislation improves system safeguards requirements for clearinghouses, trading platforms and swap data repositories; clarifies provisions for relief in the event of a broker bankruptcy;  to strengthen the resiliency of financial market infrastructure; adds whistleblower protections for employees of organizations under CFTC jurisdiction; codifies no action letters that have been in the place making permanent relief for churches, university endowments, and other charitable organizations that use the markets to provide healthcare and retirement plans for their employees; enables further cooperation between the CFTC and international regulatory bodies; establishes an internship program to promote diversity in hiring; and authorizes the CFTC to make an honors program that will help them grow their own talent.

Bill materials, including text of the bill and an accompanying manager’s amendment, as well as video of the markup, are available here.